Quantitative characterization of climate change and its impact on aeolian desertification: a case study in northwest Shanxi of China

Aeolian desertification, a serious degradation of soil and vegetation, is one of the most important issues in arid and semi-arid regions in terms of society/economy and environment. However, there still remains problematic on the study of climate change and its impact on aeolian desertification in the such region. To reverse aeolian desertified land (ADL), it is necessary to identify the causes of ADL. The paper uses meteorological data to characterize climate change and its impact on ADL during 1970–2015 with the method of geostatistics, and the results showed that the climate tended to be warmer and drier. The linear trend rates of annual mean temperature for the whole year (WY), winter half year (WHY), and summer half year (SHY) were 0.24 °C (10 a)⁻¹, 0.25 °C (10 a)⁻¹, and 0.18 °C (10 a)⁻¹, respectively. The linear trend rates of average precipitation were − 8.29 mm (10 a)⁻¹, 2.69 mm (10 a)⁻¹, and − 8.27 mm (10 a)⁻¹, respectively. Rising temperatures in WY, WHY, and SHY lead to increase topsoil evaporation and may trigger ADL development. However, the decreasing precipitation in SHY weakened soil erosion, and the increasing precipitation with a rate of 0.26 mm a⁻¹ in WHY improved the soil moisture content. Therefore, our results show that climatic change has a relatively high sensitivity, especially in WHY, to the expansion or reversal of ADL in semi-arid regions.